The U.S. Justice Department has demanded – and a federal judge has agreed – that residents of a North Carolina city cannot make their municipal elections nonpartisan because the Obama administration representatives don't like the possible outcomes that could result.
The result comes in a recent case involving Kinston, where voters overwhelmingly – the victory margin was about 2-1 – decided they wanted to leave the political affiliations off of candidates' names in their city elections.
Not so fast, said Barack Obama's Justice Department. If the affiliations are left off, a few white voters might not know who was the Democrat, and they might vote for a member of another party, the federal officials warned, and that can't be allowed.
After city officials waffled before the demand, several citizens challenged the order in court, and now a judge has turned them back without ruling on the issue itself. The judge said the citizens – taxpayers and voters in the city – had no "standing" to challenge how their own elections are run.
Kinston's plan was simple: make the elections nonpartisan so that voters would choose a name, not a political party.
However, the U.S. attorney general ordered the election results voided because "removing the partisan cue in municipal elections will, in all likelihood, eliminate the single factor that allows black candidates to be elected to office."
The federal government argued that "a majority of white Democrats support white Republicans over black Democrats in Kinston city elections," except for "a small group of white Democrats [who] maintain strong party allegiance and [who] will continue to vote along party lines, regardless of the race of the candidate.”
"This small, but critical, amount of white crossover votes," the federal government said, "results from the party affiliation of black-preferred candidates, most if not all of whom have been black."
It was in 2008 when a citizens' initiative in Kinston to make the elections nonpartisan passed with a near supermajority of 2-1.
But the Justice Department immediately intervened, explaining the election had to be voided because it would have altered the elections and the federal department's own statistical analysis revealed the change could "diminish" the ability of black voters in the city to elect their preferred candidates.
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The result comes in a recent case involving Kinston, where voters overwhelmingly – the victory margin was about 2-1 – decided they wanted to leave the political affiliations off of candidates' names in their city elections.
Not so fast, said Barack Obama's Justice Department. If the affiliations are left off, a few white voters might not know who was the Democrat, and they might vote for a member of another party, the federal officials warned, and that can't be allowed.
After city officials waffled before the demand, several citizens challenged the order in court, and now a judge has turned them back without ruling on the issue itself. The judge said the citizens – taxpayers and voters in the city – had no "standing" to challenge how their own elections are run.
Kinston's plan was simple: make the elections nonpartisan so that voters would choose a name, not a political party.
However, the U.S. attorney general ordered the election results voided because "removing the partisan cue in municipal elections will, in all likelihood, eliminate the single factor that allows black candidates to be elected to office."
The federal government argued that "a majority of white Democrats support white Republicans over black Democrats in Kinston city elections," except for "a small group of white Democrats [who] maintain strong party allegiance and [who] will continue to vote along party lines, regardless of the race of the candidate.”
"This small, but critical, amount of white crossover votes," the federal government said, "results from the party affiliation of black-preferred candidates, most if not all of whom have been black."
It was in 2008 when a citizens' initiative in Kinston to make the elections nonpartisan passed with a near supermajority of 2-1.
But the Justice Department immediately intervened, explaining the election had to be voided because it would have altered the elections and the federal department's own statistical analysis revealed the change could "diminish" the ability of black voters in the city to elect their preferred candidates.
Read more
3 comments:
The city will not be allowed to make such decisions. We are slaves XX I mean citizens of the Federal Government (a corporation in London) and as such, are subject to Federal Laws
What?!!! This is crazy! Why not remove the labels. They really don't mean anything anyway. If this were done then people would have to do a little research into the candidates which would be a big plus.
I bet if they ran the numbers, the amount of whites that vote for black republicans would be the same as the number of whites that vote for white republicans. In fact the number of blacks voting for black republicans may even increase and wouldn't Dr. Martin L. King Jr be proud of that as he and his father were Republicans! You see.... blacks don't owe any of their freedoms to white democrats. They owe their freedoms to our Lord Jesus Christ. That is the one foundation that no party could rise against when King spoke!
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